Heaven Helps Those Who Help Themselves!

"The help of others makes you weak. But helping oneself becomes the most powerful force." This was said by a British journalist Samuel Smiles, who emphasized individual reform with the concept of ‘self-help’ in the mid-nineteenth century. The spirit of Saemaul Undong is based on this spirit of ‘self-help’.

In 1970, the government distributed cement to 33,000 farming and fishing villages nationwide and demanded they reform as self-reliant villages. The government left to their own discretion what the villages should do with the cement. The village that had good achievements earned the government's follow-up support. The villages were stimulated and actively participated in the Saemaul project.

Ugeum 1-ri, which is located in Gasan-myeon, Pocheon-gun, Gyeonggi-do, achieved its status as a self-reliant village after 3 years of Saemaul project. All they got were 550 bags of cement and a ton of rebar from the government. Residents had never gathered money. Even through their conditions they not only made money but also had environmental reforms. How did they achieve their ‘self-help’ spirit? It was from their wise and dedicated leader.

The people of Ugeum-ri living along the stream suffered severely from floods every rainy season. So for a bridge with a dike, the county government donated cement and rebar, but not financial support. It was a burden for residents to pay for the construction, and eventually, they gave up. Then Lee Gang-gyu, a Saemaul leader, had a novel idea - to sell pebbles which were scattered throughout the stream to pay for the construction cost. Every single person in the town went to the stream and gathered pebbles. After continuous cooperation drinking rice wine and earning money, the residents learned empirically that they can solve the problem with wisdom and power even if there is no money.

* There is a big war here in the age of tribal society because of the old place name of 'Machi-mi', which is said to have been called that because the war ended at the end of the fierce bloodshed.

Residents of the Ugeum-ri village made money by scraping weeds or planting trees with cooperation. And they spent spare money on building village halls, public baths, and expanding village paths. They also invested in a new variety of crops and breeding cows. As household income increased, residents became more confident. When the government asked for a compost production increase, the residents produced 3 times more than the quota and were selected as a model village in Gyeonggi Province. It was all because of village cooperation.

There was Lee Gang-gyu's extraordinary leadership behind this. He was an intellectual holding a degree of education and once operated a tent school for underprivileged youths who couldn’t attend school when he was a teacher in Pungmoon Women’s Middle school. He was devoted to Saemaul Undong project of his hometown despite being frail in one leg due to polio.

Lee suggested another idea to develop the town. It was to develop natural resources -- make abandoned Ugeum Reservoir into a paid fishing hole in order to secure stable village funding. Fishermen from the city visited the town for the fishing hole, and a carp farm began to operate. Thanks to the business, local residents no longer needed to seek funds that would be used for a public project.

The pebbles in the stream, the fields full of weeds in the mountains, and the abandoned reservoirs were priming waters for a village development.